The use of electronic equipment such as personal computers, servers, and other network operable devices has continued to progress over the past decades. This progression has been accompanied by an increased need to transfer large amounts of data at ever-increasing speeds and the resulting requirement of a sufficiently powerful network infrastructure. One particular area of concentration within network infrastructure has been the plug/jack mating region together with the individual plug and jack components. It is within these components that increasing crosstalk often occurs at high bandwidths.
As of today, the RJ45 connector has been one of the commonly used standards for making electrical connections within a network. While this standard is widely employed, the physical layout of electrical conductors in an RJ45 connector can cause increasing levels of crosstalk at higher bandwidths. To combat unwanted crosstalk, new plug/jack designs have been implemented. However, to ensure the ability to interface RJ45 components to new networks, it is desirable to have the new plug/jack designed be backwards compatible.
One such design is commonly referred to as GG45. A GG45 jack may provide channel backwards compatibility for standard RJ45 plugs where eight conductors are used for Category 6 (CAT6) (100/250 MHz) and Category 6A (CAT6A) (500 MHz) operation. Furthermore, a GG45 connector generally includes four additional conductors (two conductor pairs) in the corners of the plug aperture opposite of the RJ45 plug interface contacts (PICs) that interface with networks such as the high-speed Category 7 (CAT7) 600 MHz and Augmented Category 7 (CAT7A) 1000 MHz, or higher frequency, networks. A CAT6 or CAT6A plug uses the original 1-8 PICs (RJ45 mode), but a CAT7 or CAT7A ARJ45 plug instead uses the two pairs of contacts in the corners of the plug aperture and the 1,2 and 7,8 RJ45 PICs (GG45 mode). A protrusion on the nose of the ARJ45 plug actuates the jack for the alternative contact positions. In RJ45 CAT6A mode compensation circuitry is used in the connector; however, in GG45 mode the compensation circuitry may not be needed because of the separation of the plug interface contacts used in this mode in both the ARJ45 plug and the GG45 jack.
Some designs of GG45 jacks are known. However, these designs often exhibit high levels of mechanical complexity which can detract from reliability. Also, known designs exhibit electrical problems such as electrical imbalance (common mode to differential mode conversion and vice versa), relatively high return loss, and relatively high insertion loss for some of the conductor pairs.
Thus, there exists a need for a switchable jack with a cost effective and reliable method of actuation between RJ45 and switched high bandwidth modes, which has minimal impact on jack electrical performance.